


The Hamster Wheel

by awkward_mushroom



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (sorry), Episode: s15e16 Drag Me Away (From You), Gen, He doesn't get one, Heavy Angst, How is that not a tag, Hurt Sam Winchester, I wrote this on my phone at 2am, Introspection, Jack Kline Needs a Break, Sam Winchester Needs a Hug, Sam Winchester's Lack of Bodily Autonomy, Sam Winchester-centric, Season/Series 15, Team Free Will (Supernatural), dean critical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27201728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkward_mushroom/pseuds/awkward_mushroom
Summary: In the car on the way back from that Baba Yaga case, Sam thinks about free will, God, Lucifer and Jack.he thinks about all the times he's lost his own free will. and he thinks about Dean.and he thinks about all the times he's lost his free will to Dean, and now its happening again.(based on an idea I saw on Tumblr about how Sam didn't react the same way dean did when discovering how God is controlling in season 15 bc he was used to it from Lucifer doing it to him.)
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, God & Sam Winchester, Lucifer & Sam Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 60





	The Hamster Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> not really sure what this is, but I wrote it on my phone in the middle of the night, so if you see any errors let me know!

>   
>  ‘He's saying he's been playing us. This whole time. Our entire lives.’  
>  \- Sam Winchester to God, season 14, episode 20, Moriah  
> 

Sam was disturbingly used to this feeling. the feeling that everything he has ever done, ever will do, is manipulated and planned for and monitored by beings beyond his control.

he thinks of Brady, who was a friend and then who changed. changed so fundamentally and conspicuously, right down to his core. but Sam didn’t notice. he thinks back to Lucifer, arms spread wide in a room filled with people. people from his life. 

people who had been taken over and inhabited and corrupted and violated, right down to their souls.

people who had just been _used_ , used to spy on him, used and discarded by beings who didn’t care for individual human life

there’s a reason he doesn’t react like Dean. well, a reason beside everything of course. a reason beside the fact that the two brothers had taken different paths a long time ago, beside the fact that Sam doesn’t know if he’ll ever forgive Dean for holding a gun to Jack’s head and being ready to shoot. 

besides all that.

and the reason is he’s used to it.

he’s gone through this before, this feeling of shock and betrayal. this knowledge that everything you did has been monitored and reported back on.

this knowledge that, whether you knew it or not, you had always been walking the path some greater being had determined for you.

the self doubt, the distrust of everything around you, the distrust of yourself.

because for a very long time now, Sam hasn’t been able to trust anything. his own thoughts, his body, his brother. trust that any of this was real.

because sometimes Sam wonders if he’s still in the Cage, still floating above the coals with Lucifer and Micheal. and other times he almost wishes this was all some fantasy crafted by Lucifer.

Dean get stuck on this idea of a hamster wheel, this idea of rats in a maze, turning left and right but still in the maze all the same. stuck in the knowledge that everything he did was for nothing. 

Sam doesn’t. he’s known that for a long time.

***

Sam doesn’t feel free. that’s what he tells Dean at least, and it’s the truth. but he doesn’t elaborate on it. doesn’t explain why.

he never told Dean about his day as Lucifer, what Lucifer had revealed to him, and Dean never asked.

he probably forgot. forgot that before he took his dive in that cemetery all those years ago that he had spent some _quality time_ with Lucifer beforehand.

the fact that he spent less than 24 hours being used an archangel’s meat suit was kind of overshadowed by 180 years of torture.

Sam’s soullessness, the Wall, and then the hallucinations and then the leviathans and then Deans year in purgatory and then the hell trials and then and then and then. like what he told Rowena, the world kept ending and he kept pushing it down. 

and he never tells Dean. none of it.

he doesn’t tell Dean when he looks at him, eyes squinted while he is sleeping or researching or too wrapped up in mouthing the words to lyrics in the impala to notice. when Sam really looks at him and wonders if it’s actually his brother sitting next to him.

wonders if it’s not another way for something to keep track of him.

when Dean had the mark of cain, a mark of fratricide, _Lucifer’s_ mark on his arm, Sam watched his brother turn into something else, watched him be taken over and inhabited and corrupted and violated.

by Lucifer, because it was always Lucifer wasn’t it.

but at least it was still /Dean/, well, that’s what he told himself anyway. beneath the rage and the bloodlust, hands shaking like an addict waiting for his next hit (and by god could Sam understand), it was all Dean underneath.

it had to be.

but then it wasn’t. 

and that coping mechanism, telling himself over and over that it was still Dean deep down stilldeanstilldeanstilldean came back to bite him in the ass. 

(doesn’t it always).

because suddenly he couldn’t believe it was still Dean. it couldn’t be Dean, not anymore. Dean couldn’t pick a demon over his own brother. but then again, Sam did.

Dean couldn’t chase Sam around the bunker, their _home_ , with a hammer like they were in some horror movie.

but he did. and they never talked about it.

he thought they were going on two seperate paths, but that wasn’t true. they were on the same path, just at different times.

manipulated by angels and demons, being branded or bled into without consent, getting addicted to that feeling of power, the brief control they had over something in their lives. turning into something that they’re not, without morals or feeling. possessed by an archangel for the greater good.

making deals to save each other, with crossroads demons or reapers or Kings of Hell or angels or vampires or archangels.

but in Sam’s dreams they were killing each other, over and over and over again.

maybe they always had been. 

***

sometimes he wonders if any of his actions were really his at all.

Team Free Will they called themselves. way back in the first apocalypse. little did they know how often they would be fighting for their free will in all the years to come.

against Heaven, against Hell, Lucifer, Ruby, Micheal, Death, Amara and now God.

God who supposedly included free will in the package. guess not.

but Sam felt like he should have seen that coming a long, long time ago. with the number of times he’s lost control of his own body, his mind, his actions, to gods creation of angels.

to anything really.

first with Meg, he remembers how his lungs rattled and his coughs echoed for days after she smoked two packs of cigarettes with his body, one after the other.

remembers his hands shaking with an addiction he didn’t even start, couldn’t control. 

sometimes, every now and then, he’ll still have a cigarette. when he’s stressed, when he needs control or when he needs release. when he needs to stop thinking.

when he’s craving something much deeper and darker then nicotine.

he thinks of Meg when he does. sometimes he has a cigarette to honour her, because in the end she was on their side.

and then it never stopped. first he was being groomed to be the Boy King, to lead an army of demons into war. 

then he was being strung along by Ruby, his blind faith and need for first a friend and comfort after Dean’s death, then as an addict, chasing his dealer with the foolish idea that he had an actual relationship with her.

(that’s what he tells himself, what he has to believe. because he knows that she cared about him, that she truly thought they could be together after Lucifer had risen. 

but it’s so much easier to think that it was all a lie.)

then Lucifer was in his head, for the first time anyway. sneaking into his dreams as Jessica, and then as himself. taking away all of Sam’s options, even the final one.

Sam knows this, definitively. he tested it, right before Dean called. it was unsettlingly easy really, to get his gun from the bag and press it under his chin.

he doesn’t think he was dead for more than a minute. Lucifer works quickly.

then he was possessed by an archangel. and he killed. killed all those people set to monitor him throughout his life, twisted Bobby’s neck like a stalk off an apple, reduced Cas to atoms in a spurt of blood and gore.

then he was gone, but not really.

then he was back, but not really.

he wasn’t even himself, not really. but he was free. free of angels and demons. working good old fashioned monster of the week cases, not trying to stop the apocalypse. some of those memories were sickeningly comforting to Sam. the freedom from guilt, from shame, from grief. the pure focus on what was in front of him, on the hunt, the sex, the monster.

but then, The Wall. Dean lying to him, trying to pretend like everything was fine, (not for the first time, certainly not for the last). pretending as if his own brain couldn’t crack at any second.

Sam was already used to being afraid of his actions, but being afraid of his own thoughts was something different entirely.

(but he would get used to that too, eventually)

then his brain was trying to rip itself apart, bursting at the seams with memories of Lucifer and torture and pain.

then later (much later, after Cas fixed what he broke and they stabbed Dick and he was alone. after his year with Amelia and Riot, finally feeling like he could breathe again, like he could trust himself again.)

later it was his body that was betraying him, breaking down and-

and then his body wasn’t really his own anyways and Kevin was dead and-

and then Lucifer was in his head _again_ , and he was stupid enough to think that it was God talking to him, and-

and then Pantsuit was in his mind, and he was in her bed, and everything felt muffled and sluggish until he snapped back to reality, cold piercing his bones, shaking with the knowledge what she _had just done_ and-

and it never stopped, so he stopped being surprised. everything came with a catch, with a price. 

even when Lucifer was finally dead, Nick was still left behind. and Sam tried to give him a second chance, as he looked at this broken husk of a vessel and saw himself. tried to balance the scales just a little, but that was a mistake too.

maybe it’s better when somethings controlling him, because he can never make the right decisions by himself.

***

sometimes Sam looks at Dean and sees his father.

not always, not frequently. not when Deans cooking or laughing or helping him research for a hunt. not when he’s talking to or about Cas with that love in his eyes. 

on the days when they aren’t fighting anyway.

those fights remind him of John and himself, all those years ago. the fighting, the storming out. Cas is the Sam in in this situation, leaving without word, without notice, and coming back and leaving again. 

(he doesn’t feel hurt when Cas leaves without telling him, when he has a fight with Dean and immediately abandons both of them, as if he forgets Dean’s thoughts aren’t Sam’s thoughts. that he’s Sam’s friend too. 

maybe he does feel hurt.)

Dean reminds him of John. when he constantly keeps secrets and conceals truths to control him, to get the desired reaction. to stop him from bringing up inconvenient things like ethics, as if that wasn’t what they did.

it was like he’d reverted back into the ‘all monsters are evil’ mindset he thought they’d grown out of a decade ago.

Dean reminds him of John he keeps yells at Sam. years and years of yelling at him to shut up or to pick a side. Sam doesn’t know what’s right anymore, when he tried to be intermediary with Mary, Dean hated it, but when he picks a side Dean doesn’t like that either.

what Dean really wants is for Sam to pick _his_ side. like John.

but Dean especially reminds him of John today, in the car, coming back from that hunt with the Baba Yaga.

but today, Sam can’t do it. today Sam yells back, as Dean tells him to be quiet and let Jack blow himself up.

because apparently following Billie’s plan was better than following God’s, although Sam’s struggling to see the difference anymore.

isn’t the whole point of killing God and Amara to wipe the slate clean? but now it just feels like they were creating a power vacuum for Billie, who also likes order, likes things to happen as she thinks they should.

Dean tells Sam to follow Billie’s plan as if they hadn’t constantly looked at their own destiny and refused to conform, as if they hadn’t _always_ searched for another way, a way that didn’t involved sacrifice and death.

Sam looks at him and thinks _you don’t change_. he thinks back to a graveyard and a gun named The Equaliser, a comic book name that made what it did seem less real.

less like it was going to kill two of Sam’s family in one fell swoop, and utterly decimate the two who remained.

he thinks back to a crying boy, only three years old and surrounded by sorrow and tragedy, begging for forgiveness.

Dean refusing to give it, despite the fact that he never blamed sam for anything he did without his soul.

(but that wasn’t quite true was it? outside a lonely church with the King of Hell tied up inside, preparing for confession, Dean listing all his mistakes and transgressions and saying losing his soul was one of them.

despite the fact he had saved the world and that was more Cas’ fault that Sam’s)

thinks back to Dean flicking the safety back on, lowering the gun and saying _no_.

saying no to destiny and fate and God himself. 

thinks back to a cake, haphazardly made with dripping blue icing and sprinkles, and smiling because although this might not mean _forgiveness_ but it meant moving on. healing.

and now he was telling Sam to shut up and stop bringing up ethics and just be grateful it was _Jack_ pulling the sacrifice move this year, as if that was something to be grateful for.

as if that kid didn’t just deserve to live a happy life after _everything_.

Dean telling him that _you don’t get a choice_.

so much for Team Free Will.

but there was never any free will, was there?

not really.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok somebody braver then me has to do some meta on the parallels between Sam and Dean and The Handmaids tale because come ON. that rats-in-a-maze comment dean made? there's a quote exactly the same in that novel.
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoyed the Sam Angst!
> 
> and if u rly loved it, or have any CONSTRUCTIVE criticism (im sensitive ok), comments are AWESOME so.
> 
> edit: this was written BEFORE 15x17 aired and wow i totally called that Billie thing huh


End file.
